Battle of the Little Big Horn 

(credit: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons) 

Chapter 3.                                 (continued) 

A society has to have at least some universal concepts in place, or it deteriorates into dysfunction. Those basic parts of their culture got those people to here and now because some of those parts work. These are also the morés from which a cultural renaissance for those people, any people, can begin. And in the real world, in other words, any people can work out ways to evolve their tribe’s culture toward a way of life that synthesizes the best, most effective morés and customs from both cultures.

Parties on all sides can envision and write a new culture with morés and customs new to everyone at the negotiating table. With intelligence, goodwill, and perseverance on all sides, any culture can be synthesized with any other in a few generations. In plain terms, the kids will adapt and move on if we give them a way.  

In the United Kingdom, Anglo-Saxons hated Normans for years after 1066, but they learned to live together and gradually, they synthesized. Intermarriage rose, and generally, the terms for the distinctions faded. By 1300, the people in the southern half of the U.K. nearly all saw themselves as just English.

The Scots and the Welsh both exist within the U.K. while keeping control of major parts of their culture – language, education, and the media, in particular.

Canada contains millions of francophone citizens as well as millions of anglophone ones. There have been strained times, but no majority on either side has ever voted to let the other half go. Too many of us like those other folk.  

It can be done. In our times, with more mature ideas of pluralism and tolerance in place, I believe we can do the synthesizing of all tribes into a “global village” type of social ecosystem without even one war.   

Change isn’t necessarily bad. In fact, it has been well documented that cultures are all changing constantly, sometimes over many generations, sometimes more rapidly. But all cultures change. Useful memes are incorporated into the lore of any tribe if they improve basic aspects of the tribe’s life like farming, fishing, hunting, healing, having babies, nurturing them, creating more efficient commerce, etc.

For example, many tribes of North America made excellent use of both horses and guns – cultural intruders from Europe – when they incorporated those new technologies into their ways of life. And it is important to note here how these tribes came to understand, accept, and use the new technologies: they acquired those technologies and created their own horse cultures not by compulsion, but by choice. Every tribe contains at least a few members who yearn to extend the tribe’s control over its domain. Then, if their experiments work, usually, the tribe as a whole will take up the new morés and customs. Horses were amazing to the first natives in North America who saw them, but in a generation the men who had grown up with horses were among the best riders in the world.   

All of this evidence leads us to the tentative conclusion that it should be possible to navigate any culture enduring culture shock, through the rough times, and on to an even more vigorous way of life on the other side of the change.

In any case, this much is certain: there is no going back. Not for the indigenous tribes, nor for Europeans, nor for any others. We all go on because going on is the choice that enables survival. Environments change. So must we.    

Furthermore, we can remind ourselves that entropy, uncertainty, evolution, and ecosystems are present anywhere there is life. No matter where they live or how complex their culture is, every tribe has to get food, dispose of wastes, build shelters, make clothes, find mates, cure illness, heal injuries, have children, and train them in their tribe’s way of life. Otherwise, their way of life dies out.

Thus, every culture, wherever and whenever it may exist or have existed, has had to deal with reality, totally natural or partially man-made. If it had not done so, it wouldn’t be here. And when a tribe’s reality evolves – when a tribe sees in reality things it had previously been unaware of – its culture must evolve too if it is to live. For example, both Japan and Germany did after 1945. What Moral Realism tells us is these changes do not have to come about by war.   

It is my contention that we can begin to bridge the gaps between cultures by speaking – through translators, if necessary – with other tribes about their ideas of courage, wisdom, freedom, love, balance, etc. Morés for the cardinal virtues will be, in some form, in the culture of any tribe as will words for basic features of reality like hunger, disease, injury, aging, courage, desire, love, and death.

A culture’s ways of viewing the basics of life can seem troubling for visitors. For example, one tribe’s morés and customs may work to guard tribe solidarity at the expense of the freedom of the individual. This social fact might trouble many Westerners who assume individual freedom is “right” and “good”. No tribe lives like a hive of social insects. Some respect for individuals is always there. 

But material for discussion and beginning negotiation will be there. Finding ways to integrate two cultures can always begin with discussions about courage, wisdom, work, perseverance, foresight, freedom, love and so on. There is always a way, and it is made much easier when all admit that they are willing to change. Change was always a reality in any case. Change is the only constant, but it is made much easier when it begins in mutual respect.  

With patience, intelligence, and good will, any culture can be translated into any other. Or, even better, the two can be integrated to yield a hybrid culture. With misunderstandings and friction, yes, but every culture has those already, as does every family and every individual conscience. We can re-emphasize here that leaders on both sides can negotiate ways to create a new, hybrid culture more vigorous than either of its parents. The task of integrating cultures is full of hazards, but also of opportunities. We get stronger by cooperating and competing, and mingling, and these all can be done in mutually respectful ways. With goodwill on all sides, we can always learn from each other.  

What really is immoral in the view of Moral Realism is to do nothing. To watch indigenous peoples deteriorate into dysfunction and refuse to even try to help. To watch the world drift toward war and refuse to even try to solve its woes. No relativist argument can justify such policies.

Thus, in response to critics who resist all attempts to translate cultures into each other, the bottom line is that we have no other choice. The shadow of the mushroom cloud looms over us all. We must evolve and integrate or die.   

                                 Tokyo after fire-bombing (March, 1945) 

                            (credit: Ishikawa Koyo, via Wikimedia Commons) 

                                             Tokyo Olympics (main stadium, 1964)

                                    (credit: Arne Museler, via Wikimedia Commons)